BAD OMENS ✬ luke hemmings

6.9 | feels like

The fated day has finally arrived: Aria is leaving for university. She has two hours until her dad comes home from work, barges through the front door, grabs her suitcases, and tosses them in the car. The girl is actually leaving, for real, this time.

She remembers the days she and Michael wished to get out, to leave the school, to leave the town and move somewhere else – they were so sick of seeing the same faces every day, being in the same place with people they didn't like. But now, Aria doesn't want to leave. She doesn't want to say goodbye, even though she should.

Michael's gone, Sade's gone, and Jonah's gone. It's her turn.

Even her bedroom is empty. Gone is the photo wall she's spent years perfecting, over a hundred images of her and her friends that she's pulled down (and packed into the tight crevices of her suitcase). Aria hadn't seen the white wall so barren and empty before – nothing other than blu-tack and tape residue to mark that there was something there.

She'll be back for Christmas, though, hopefully. For all Aria knows, her dad might decide to pack up and take another job – he has been thinking about it for a while, and there's an offer on the table that he's reluctant to accept. Speaking of her father, he will live alone now – Aria doesn't want to leave him alone! It's been the two of them for four years– what will he eat for dinner?

Okay, fine, Aria shouldn't be worried about her father – he's a fifty-year-old man who's capable of taking care of himself, but even then, she had to teach him how to use the washing machine when she was fourteen, and lord knows the man doesn't know how to work the rice cooker. Maybe her mother will stay a while longer? The woman had been at the house all summer; hopefully, she'll stay an extra few weeks.

Aria stares at the empty wall, her accent wall, which used to hold every important memory of her teenage years, and she hates it. It made her bedroom look cool! Now, the room she spent most of her life in only shows a fifteen-year-old personality with posters from teen dramas and boys in bands.

The girl thought it might've been a little symbolic, or maybe she was still reeling from the two years of higher-level language and literature that had stopped her from ever looking at things casually. Either way, Aria sees it as leaving her adolescence behind but bringing the memories of her friends with her – until all those photos inevitably get shoved into a photo album or box in ten years for future kids to find or when nostalgia kicks in during a sad, cold, rainy night after a bottle of wine.

However, despite having a short time, Aria leaves her room, grabs her car keys, and leaves the house loudly, telling her mother, 'She'll be back.' She has one last thing she needs to do, and the girl will beat herself up if she leaves without making one last goodbye.

Aria never thought she'd ever make this goodbye – not until recently. In the past, it was seen as a 'good riddance,' but she has something to say; there are probable ends to tie up and confirmations and affirmations she needs.

So, driving to a house on another street – as recklessly and quickly as she can to make enough time for everything she needs to say and do – Aria finds her way to Luke.

To the blond boy who always catches her eye in a room, the one she constantly searches for in a room. Even when Aria hated him, she'd always look for him. Luke had been the one constant in her life – if she were angry, he'd be there to take the brunt of it in vulgar, petty comments. And when she needed someone to talk to, he'd always be around and ready.

She punched him, shoved him away, iced him out, stormed away from him, yelled at him, then laughed with him, played with his hair, and held him. Because of that, Aria will never be able to figure out how the universe works.